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No START button 8.1 so far...

Hands-on with Leaked Builds of Windows Blue 8.1

With several leaked builds for Windows Blue hitting the web in rapid succession, it seems as though Microsoft is as leaky as a sieve these days. A leak for build 9364 made its way to the internet last March, and two more leaked builds (9369 & 9374) have hit the Internet in the weeks since.

...Well, there's no sign of a Start Button on the builds we've tried out.

FWIW....... There is a recently improved third party fix for Win 8 that reportedly give you a start button and program menu much like win 7 .

From the info......
"StartMenu8 not only brings back the convenient Start Menu to Windows 8, but also allows you to bypass Metro screen on start of Windows 8 and boot to desktop directly".
It also allows you to easily switch between it and the default metro desktop with a hotkey.

Thanks for the tip. I've tried Start8 (hope I have that correct) but wasn't completely satisfied. For one thing it was difficult to get the cursor into the corner without triggering the Metro nonsense -- the target was too small. And overall it didn't seem to restore enough of the conventional desktop menu systems that Win8 is missing.

I can now confirm that most of the rumored coming changes to the Start experience in Windows 8.1 “Blue” are correct. And I’ve got a few screenshots to help demonstrate how these changes are implemented. ...

Han Solo: It'll take a few moments to get the boot sequence from the UEFI firmware.

Luke: Are you kidding? At the rate Apple is gaining marketshare?

Han: Booting to desktop ain't like playing Angry Birds on your tablet, boy! Without precise calculations we could fry the autoexec.bat or corrupt the registry, and that'd end your boot sequence real quick, wouldn't it?

Anyone here actually running Win8? It seems either everyone loves it or everyone hates it. I do own a copy of Win8 Pro (sitting on a shelf under a million dust bunnies) when it was selling for $15. Been toying with the idea of installing it along with Start8. Afraid of commitment though!

Anyone here actually running Win8? It seems either everyone loves it or everyone hates it. I do own a copy of Win8 Pro (sitting on a shelf under a million dust bunnies) when it was selling for $15. Been toying with the idea of installing it along with Start8. Afraid of commitment though!

I looked at Win8 with Start8 and didn't like it. I would try other options to modify 8 to something usable. I've read of Classic Shell and will try that next, but not soon. I'd rather look at Mint 15 Cinnamon and OpenSuse 12.3 first.